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ICv2: North American Manga Market to Drop 20% in 2010 (Updated)

posted on 2010-10-06 19:44 EDT

Retail news source says market will have dropped 50% in 3 years if trends continue

The retail news source ICv2 reports at its Comics & Digital Conference at New York Comic Con on Thursday that the North American manga market dropped 9% during the first half of 2010. If the trend continues, ICv2 estimates that the market will have dropped 20% in 2010 compared to the year before, and will have dropped 50% since three years ago. ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp cited the lower exposure of manga-based properties on television, as well as the still nascent digital strategy of the industry.

Nevertheless, ICv2 predicts that the overall digital comic market is growing in North America from US$500,000 in 2009 to US$6-8 million this year. The overall comic book and graphic novel market dropped 12% in the first half of 2010 in North America.

Update: Masaaki Shimizu, General Manager of International Business Strategy Division at Bitway, reported at the conference that the Japanese digital manga market garnered US$600 million in annual sales. The Beat blog reports that the Japanese print manga market totaled 1 billion yen (US$12 million), but Oricon reported that the 2009 Japanese manga market was actually 270.5 billion yen (about US$2.983 billion).

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